Lily's home, and other things

I've come to the conclusion that things out here on the Rim happen in bursts. You can go days, or even weeks, without any excitement and then all of a sudden everything happens at once. While we're still getting sporadic reports of drone activity, we've managed to recover Lily.

Mindo, xoxo's brother, payed us a visit with more questions about Lily. I don't trust him. I don't even like him. But he was our best lead on getting her back and figuring out how to fix her if we could get her back alive. The thing that gave me a glimmer of hope was him talking about all the pictures Lily had taken, saying she was gathering momentoes of the people and places that mattered in her life. Whether Lily herself realized it or not, she'd given us the key to getting her back. The crazy adorable not-cat had given us a goram backup.

I didn't know how much the 'reset' mode on that collar would actually wipe out. Lily's brain was at least mostly organic, and brains aren't like computers. Neural pathways don't wipe clean. If we were lucky, we could use all those images and objects Lily'd gathered to restore her memory, and with it the Person she'd become.

I'd set General off to get some memories of our own to help Lily recover -Mostly just the security feed backups from town. Any of the images that had her and the townsfolk, so she could see how people cared for her here and how caring she acted with them - when General and I both got waves from Lily, coming out of some abandoned comms relay in the wastes.

General did the heavy lifting. I just flew the boat this time. He might be telling the story in Fook's some night, but that's for him to decide. All I cared about was we'd managed to recover Lily and that goram collar.

She's not fixed yet. Not hardly. But she's back. Lily's a little worse for wear maybe, but there's a fighting chance we're not going to lose her.

On a more personal note, I've found I'm falling in love with Sabrina. I don't know how or why, especially since the both of us had it something fierce for Imrhien, but it's happened. We started getting friendly at the Yule season holiday party at Fireflys, and it went from there. Friendly, to friends, to lovers - the girl knows how to raise my temperature - to love.

The other night Sabrina made our being a real item public at Firefly's. Gray's even said we make a cute couple. I'm glad he thinks so, 'cause Sabrina and I have been pretty near inseperable on Blackburne.

I haven't stopped loving Imrhien. I don't think either Sabrina or I have, but that doesn't really matter. I don't believe you need to stop loving someone in order to love someone else right along with them. Imrhien'll always have part of my heart, but Sabrina's warm and close and she makes the 'verse a lot less lonely.

The love in your heart grows to fill the need. It's something I'd forgotten a long time ago. And now? Now I find the emotions confusing, but welcome in ways I'd forgotten.

Just need to let Haley out for her morning romp and get back to bed before Sabrina wonders where I've gotten off to.